Okan Arslan
Member, GERAD
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Associate Professor, Department of Decision Sciences, HEC Montréal
Other titles and affiliations
Biography
Okan Arslan is an Associate Professor of Operations Research at HEC Montréal and a member of GERAD and CIRRELT. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University. His research interests focus on the design and management of large-scale networks, transportation, last-mile delivery, and emerging technologies. Okan has received prestigious awards for his research and teaching, including the Young Researcher Award (Prix Nouveau Chercheur) and the Teaching Excellence Award (Prix pour l’excellence en pédagogie) from HEC Montréal, and an Honorable Mention in the INFORMS Transportation Science & Logistics Section Best Paper Award. Okan's team also ranked among the top three in a global last-mile routing challenge organized by Amazon and MIT.
His work has been published in leading journals in the fields of operations research and transportation, including Operations Research, Transportation Science, INFORMS Journal on Computing, and Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, among others. He currently serves as an Editorial Board Editor for Transportation Research Part B: Methodological and is a member of the Early Career Editorial Advisory Board for Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. He is also involved in collaborative projects with large-scale companies, focusing on optimizing logistics and transportation networks and improving last-mile delivery systems.
As a member of GERAD, Okan enjoys being part of a dynamic research community that encourages collaboration and exploration in decision sciences.
Education
Research Axes
Research Applications
Publications
News
In an article published in The Conversation on September 16, 2026, Prakash Gawas, Camille Pinçon, Antoine Legrain, Okan Arslan and Olivier Bahn explain why algorithmic performance alone is not enough to improve urban mobility. They argue that data can become a genuine driver of sustainable transportation only when it is shareable, representative, and actionable.
The article draws in part on discussions held during the Symposium "Digital intelligence for sustainable mobility at HEC Montréal on March 17, 2026. Co-organized by GERAD, CIRRELT and CORS, the event brought together researchers in transportation and operations research, as well as Quebec actors in mobility.
Here are the winners who will each receive a fellowship:
Adel Aghajan, candidate proposed by Roland P. Malhamé and Shuang Gao from Polytechnique Montréal;
Zhongyi Jin, candidate proposed by Okan Arslan and Maryam Daryalal from HEC Montréal.
Congratulations!
Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
Call for papers: Boosting Efficiency, Sustainability and Resilience of Logistics Systems: Decision Intelligence with AI and OR
Events
Halit Üster – Southern Methodist University
Jiangbo Yu – Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering, McGill University
Ihsan Yanikoglu – Özyeğin University
Prizes and awards
Meritorious Service Award
Meritorious Service Award
Award for Teaching Excellence for an assistant professor
Best Application Paper Award
"A vehicle routing problem with time windows and workload balancing for COVID-19 testers: A case study", S Shahnejat-Bushehri, A Kermani, O Arslan, JF Cordeau, R JansNew Researcher Award
Third place in the Amazon Last Mile Routing Research Challenge
Editorial Boards & Comittees
Area Editor, Computers & Operations Research, 2025-...
Editorial Board Editor, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2021-...
Editorial Advisory Board Member of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 2023-...
Guest editor of INFOR: Information Systems and Operational Research on Emerging Topics in Transportation and Logistics, 2024, co-editing with Sibel Alumur Alev and Maximilian Schiffer.
Supervision
